The following steps will show you how to watch free football matches and other sports events for free in a few minutes (next time you will not need any guide):

1. Install some applications from here (as much applications you install as much options to watch each event)
2. Once the applications are installed, go to the Sports schedule. If eMule, Bittorrent, etc. are running in this moment as well as any other application that use quite a lot resources of your Internet bandwidth, you must stop them while you use P2P TV applications (chats, instant messengers, e-mail, navigation do not need to be stopped).
4. Once you open the Sports schedule, load the channel 30 min before the start. In order to do that you just need to click on the name of the application you want to use near the channel you want to watch. Obviously the application have to be installed on your computer (step 1). If the application is not able to open channels by clicking from the Web, the name of the application will not appear underlying so you will have to open it from the application itself.
5. Remember that channels must be opened around 30 min before the start of the event in order to receive and share the channel "signal" properly, if not you will not receive enough data from enough peers, therefore you will not watch the event properly. Besides you may be overloading the channel (specially if many people do the same) for some minutes affecting to the other users who loaded the channel with enough time. In the schedule the links are ordered by recommendation to less recommended.If after testing many events you can watch them properly, make sure to have the ports opened:

- Open the ports on the Windows Firewall or stop the firewall. Search on Google how to do that - If you have a router (a router is similar than a modem but it can also link computers between them, many computers to the same internet connections...) you might also need to open the ports that those applications use. If you do not know how to do that, search on Google the following kerywords: open ports THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_ROUTER- If you have a router but you just have a computer (not a network), the best option to use TV P2P applications is by running the router as a Single-User account instead of Multi. For more information search on Google the following keywords: Single-User account THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_ROUTER

How is watching Live football possible?

There are still more then a few countries around the world where PPV has not yet been established, and football is televised for free. Broadcasts of some of the TV stations in these countries are available via video streams on the internet.

How good is the Quality of the live streams?

The quality depends on the rate at which video streams are transmitted. This quality is measured by the same units measuring how broad you internet connection is: Kb/Sec. Most streams are transmitted at a quality of between 100Kb/Sec and 400 Kb/sec, so if your connection is somewhere around 750Kbs there is no need to rush off and pay for a broader connection package. 400Kb/sec is more or less the rate at which it is possible to watch the video stream on a full screen in reasonable quality. For quality lesser than that, the size of the media player's window has to be reduced.

Sounds too good to be true!

While this method might be a good alternative to the good old TV set, there are still some problems associated with it. Millions of people around the world are trying to connect to the servers broadcasting the streams, just as you are. These servers are not designed to support such a large number of users, so the load on them in imense. The number of users each of those servers can support is limited, and sometimes even if you manage to connect to one, the high traffic might impair its functionality, in some cases causing it to crash.

What Hardware/Software do i need to watch live streams?

1. A reasonably good computer (Pentium 3 / AMD K6-II minimum).
2. A broadband internet connection of at least 0.5Mb/sec.
3. Up to date versions of Windows Media Player, Real player, and Winamp.

The streaming Technique - Buffering

The high load on servers as well as other internet related disturbances makes it hard to stream videos without any disruptions. To overcome these problems and offer a continuous broadcast, the different media players use a method called Buffering. The video streams are not shown live, and are delayed by a couple of minutes. This gives the players time to buffer the bits of video that are to be shown. This way when the broadcast is disrupted the player can go on playing for a few more seconds before it runs out of video segments to show. When streaming resumes the player will once again buffer the bits that are to come ahead.

The size of the buffer is important. If can't be too small, otherwise frequent interruptions will cause many delays. On the other hand the player has also got to show the stream and not to be solely occupied buffering it. It is recommended that the size of the buffer is set to 30 seconds.

Setting the buffer size in windows media player:

Choose Options from the Menu toolbar. Then click on the Properties tab, and set the number of seconds buffered to 30

Setting the buffer size in Real player:

Choose Preferences from the Tools tab. Then go on the left to General -> Playback settings. On the bottom right side of the screen set the number of seconds to 30 Winamp does not require that any special settings be made.

As explained is our basic streams guide, all media players Buffer segments of a video stream prior to actually showing them. They will only show a segment once they are done buffering it, and while doing so they will start buffering the next segment.

On many occasions the server that functions as the stream's source is overloaded with clients asking for segments, and will not be able to satisfy this demand at a high enough rate. The clients' media players will have to stop showing the streams in order to finish buffering the missing segments, resulting in a segmented video stream.

That's where the brilliant P2P technology comes in to the rescue. It enables users to Share stream segments. By doing so is creates numerous sources that replace the overloaded servers, from which the media players can download those segments at a satisfactory rate. This process has great resemblance to P2P file sharing clients such as BITTORENT.

Since this technology relies on sharing, the more segments one uploads to other users, the more he is entitled to download segments for himself from others. For this reason it may take a few minutes before the received stream would run continuously. One has to upload to other users at a rate high enough to be able to download segments in a sufficient rate himself. Therefore it is recommended to establish a connection as early as possible before the starting time of a desired event. The more users sharing segments there are the better stream each one of them will get.

The current P2P programs are:

Coolstreaming, PPlive, PPstream, TVAnts, Sopcast, QQlive . Feidian (Aka Boiling Point), PDbox, Pcast, PPTVS and Mysee

Why are the streams disrupted?

There can be a number of reasons for getting disrupted streams:

1. Not enough users sharing the stream: See our P2P streaming page Here to learn why a small number of sources may not be enough.

2. Your network connection is not fast enough. We recommend to use at least a 750kbps connection.

3. Other applications are consuming too much bandwidth. Most notably traditional P2P clients such as Emule, Kazza or Bittorent are very bandwidth demanding. Make sure those are not running when you try to watch video streams.

4. Your system is infected by a virus, spyware or malware. The later two are very common these days, and may significantly reduce your pc's performance. Keep your system clean by using an anti virus and anti malware/spyware software regularly.

5. You are running Windows XP with service pack 2 which limits TCP/IP connections. You can free your OS from this limitation by installing this Patch

While we can assure you that many people have used this patch successfully, if you choose to install it you do so at your own risk.